Colin Dickey discusses the history of the Temptation of St. Anthony, the story of the 4th century desert ascetic who was tortured by hordes of demons and would go on to become the patron saint of skin diseases. Anthony became a popular subject during the Renaissance, when painters such as Heironymous Bosch, Matias Grunewald and Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicted these torments in a series of ever more fantastical and grotesque animals, and in the 19th century it became a lifelong obsession for Gustave Flaubert, who spent decades trying to craft his own retelling of the saint’s life. Topics to be discussed include: epilepsy, ergotism, demonic possession, madness, the scourge of masturbation and its relationship to capitalism, and Flaubert’s very complicated feelings about images, photographic and otherwise.

Josh Greene
A "museum"-style audio tour of Mark and Maria's house that will provide backstory on their lives and their home, including everything from the quotidian and mundane to the most intense and precious. People will access the tour via an iTunes podcast. The project is inspired by Maria's career as an exhibition designer and Mark's avocation as a collector of various types of mechanical machines and objects.

Jason TorchinskyCars Before Cars (lecture) and How To Break Out of a Car Trunk (demonstration)Lecture: The rich, slick-haired fatcats at Mercedes-Benz have long been supporting the idea that Karl Benz's 1885 three-wheeler was the birth of the automobile. Most general-interest automobile books and coffee table car books echo this idea as well, leaving the truth a bit harder to find. This lecture is about blowing the lid off that old, common notion and exploring motoring's rich and weird heritage prior to 1885. We'll even help you decide what car to buy when you find yourself in the 1860s!Demonstration: Let's face it: sooner or later, you're going to get abducted. It's a down economy, there's lots of increasingly desperate unemployed folks, and it's a more dignified way to meet new people than, say, Craigslist personals. So, yes, you'll probably get abducted, but that doesn't mean you have to like it. Let's learn how to escape.

Southern Machine Exposure Project events all take place in private homes that serve as public venues. As a result of the intimate nature of these 20 unique spaces there is limited attendance for each event. If you’d like to attend, you must sign up ahead of time and register online. Registration for each project opens seven days prior to the actual event. One new project opens daily at noon beginning June 4, 2012. Times and audience capacity varies for each project. Pre-registration is REQUIRED and all events are FREE.

Southern Machine Exposure Project is a project developed by Southern Exposure (San Francisco) and Machine Project (Los Angeles), involving 20 combinations of artists and performers from LA and SF, presented off-site in 20 homes in the Bay Area over 20 consecutive days from June 11 - 30.